Anonymous Hacks Conservative Group in Muslim TV Show Uproar

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A conservative Florida organization's opposition to the reality
show "All-American Muslim" has stirred up a storm of controversy
that's got Lowe's, a Muslim rights group, travel website Kayak,
actor Kal Penn and the hacktivist group Anonymous all choosing
sides.

Yesterday (Dec. 13), the Tampa-based Florida Family Association
told the
St. Petersburg Times that its website was hacked by a member
of Anonymous. FFA executive director David Caton said the attack
shut down the FFA site, leaving a message saying that the site
destroys free speech. (The site is back online.)

"In a country that supposedly embraces free speech, those that
oppose our position have no qualms about destroying our free
speech," Caton said. "This is the worst I've seen any group
respond."

The online takedown comes after the FFA, citing what it called
"All-American Muslim's" anti-American agenda and Islamic
"propaganda," persuaded the home-improvement chain Lowe's to pull
its ads from the TLC cable channel show.

The backlash from Lowe's compliance with the FFA riled the
Council on American-Islamic Relations as well as "Harold and
Kumar" star Kal Penn, hip-hop forefather Russell Simmons and
California Sen. Ted Liu, who told the Associated Press, "The show
is about what it's like to be a Muslim in America, and it touches
on the discrimination they sometimes face. And that kind of
discrimination is exactly what's happening here at Lowe's."

A Dec. 11 post on the
file-hosting site Pastebin credits the hack to Anonymous and
AntiSec, an offshoot of the Anonymous and LulzSec hacking groups
that targets large organizations and government corruption.

Along with exposing the email and IP addresses of 33 FFA
newsletter recipients and donors, the credit card type and card
verification numbers of 13 more and the usernames and passwords
of three FFA site administrators, the hacker, identified on his
Twitter feed only as "ihazCAnNONz," condemned the conservative
group for its "hatred, bigotry and fear mongering towards gays,
lesbians and most recently Muslim Americans."

"Anonymous will not stand for hate and divisive vitriol to be
spread across our country and whenever we can...we will stop
it..." the hacker wrote. "FFA you managed to use your power to
influence Lowe's to follow you into your
racist stupor and they too will answer for that."

The FFA's influence reached beyond Lowe's; the travel website
Kayak also decided to stop running ads on "All-American Muslim"
when the show returns next month.

"We decided to advertise on it in the first place because we
adamantly support tolerance and diversity," Robert Birge, Kayak's
chief marketing officer, wrote,
adding, "When we decided to give our money to TLC for this
program, we deemed the show a worthy topic."

Birge said that TLC was "not upfront" about the nature of the
show. He didn't elaborate, but said part of Kayak's decision was
based on the quality of the show, not its message.

"I watched the first two episodes," Birge wrote. "Mostly, I just
thought the show sucked."